Derbyshire council area

Selling Land in Amber Valley

Amber Valley adopted its first new local plan since 2006 in March 2026 and has already started the next one, to run to 2044. The council shows 5.8 years of housing land against the new plan's 434 homes a year, a figure well below the government's own for the borough, and the plan itself allows homes on land beside towns and villages outside the Green Belt, subject to its tests, without waiting for an allocation.

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Belper, Ripley, Alfreton and Heanor, With Derby at the Door

Amber Valley Borough Council is based at Ripley Town Hall and covers more than 265 square kilometres north of Derby, home to 126,200 people at the 2021 census. Its four market towns are Alfreton, Belper, Heanor and Ripley, and the adopted Local Plan adds a fifth urban area to its settlement hierarchy: land within the borough that forms part of the built framework of Derby. Seventeen key villages sit below them, among them Duffield, Ambergate, Crich, Kilburn, Horsley Woodhouse and South Wingfield.

A new plan after a long examination. The Amber Valley Borough Local Plan 2022 to 2040 was submitted on 29 July 2024 and examined at hearings from 10 to 19 December 2024. The inspectors' report, by Anne Jordan and Alison Partington, is dated 10 February 2026, and the council adopted the plan on 2 March 2026, replacing the plan of 2006.
Delivery well above target. 1,887 homes were built against a requirement of 1,091 over April 2022 to March 2025, a result of 173% in the Housing Delivery Test 2025.
Six stations. The plan lists Alfreton, Ambergate, Belper, Duffield, Langley Mill, which serves Heanor, and Whatstandwell.
A World Heritage town. The plan describes Belper as the only town in the East Midlands that lies within a World Heritage Site, the Derwent Valley Mills.
Green Belt in the south and east. It largely surrounds Belper, Heanor and Ripley and runs up to the southern edge of Alfreton.

Two numbers explain most of what follows. The adopted plan asks for 434 homes a year. The government's standard method, as the Derby housing market councils record it in their latest joint statement, asks for 643. The gap between them shapes the supply calculation today and the size of the task the next plan faces.

Amber Valley in Figures

The government's latest figures for the council, its latest five-year housing land supply, and where its local plan stands.

Housing Delivery Test 2025
173%
Meeting its housing requirement.
Five-year housing land supply
5.8 years
Five years or more of deliverable housing land. Position at 1 April 2026, measured against the adopted Local Plan requirement of 434 homes a year, plus a 20% buffer. Stated by Amber Valley Borough Council.
Checked source
Homes built against homes needed
1,887
of 1,091 needed, April 2022 to March 2025
Most recent strategic plan adopted
March 2026
The plan currently used to decide applications.
New plan progress
Updated
Local Plan 2022 to 2040 adopted March 2026; new plan to 2044 started June 2026
Checked source

Sources: Housing Delivery Test: 2025 measurement, MHCLG, published 17 August 2026; Local plans: monitoring progress, Planning Inspectorate, August 2026. Local plans move quickly, so always check the council's own website for the latest position.

Above Five Years on a 434-Home Yardstick

The council's summary of housing need and supply covers the five years from 1 April 2026 to 31 March 2031 and is the first measured after the plan's adoption. It sets out the sum in plain terms:

Source: Amber Valley Borough Council, summary of housing need and supply as at 1 April 2026.
Step	Council's figure
Yearly requirement	434 homes, from the Local Plan 2022 to 2040
Five years at that rate	2,170 homes
Buffer	20%, adding 434 homes (see below)
Five-year requirement with buffer	2,604 homes
Large sites with planning permission	2,441 homes
Local Plan allocations	42 homes
Small sites with permission, 2026/27 to 2028/29	490 homes
Small site windfalls at 85 a year, 2029/30 to 2030/31	170 homes
Less an allowance for lapsed permissions	119 homes, at 3.77% a year
Deliverable supply	3,024 homes
Result	5.8 years

That leaves a margin of 420 homes over the buffered requirement. Almost all of it rests on sites that already have permission: the plan's own allocations add only 42 homes in these five years.

A 20% Buffer That Says Nothing About Delivery

Elsewhere a 20% buffer is a penalty for building too slowly. Here it has another cause. The council applies it under the rule national policy has used for decisions since 1 July 2026, because its requirement was adopted within the last five years, was examined under a version of national policy older than December 2024, and is below 80% of the borough's need under the standard method. In other words, the buffer is there because the plan asks for so much less than the government's figure. Delivery at 173% would otherwise allow the smallest buffer of 5%.

The council's statement for 1 April 2025, measured while the plan was still at examination, used the same 434 homes a year with a 5% buffer and counted 3,370 homes against 2,279, or 7.39 years; the inspectors, working from the same figures, found well over seven years. Between the two statements the buffer rose from 5% to 20%, and large sites with permission fell from 2,769 homes to 2,441.

Why 434 and Not 424

The Derby housing market area statement of common ground, prepared mainly in autumn 2025 and signed for Amber Valley, Derby City, South Derbyshire and Derbyshire County councils, records Amber Valley's requirement as 424 homes a year, 7,632 over 2022 to 2040, including 1,320 for Derby. The inspectors' report explains the adopted figure. The plan as submitted asked for 6,564 homes from 2022. The inspectors used the updated standard method figure for 2024, 351 homes a year, and moved the start of the requirement to 2024, so that homes built earlier were not counted twice. Sixteen years at 351, plus 1,320 for Derby, comes to 434 a year after rounding, or 6,944 homes to 2040. The 424 is the same two parts spread over eighteen years from 2022: 351 for eighteen years plus 1,320, divided by eighteen, rounds to 424. On either figure the 3,024 homes clear five years.

Why the Comfortable Margin Is Not the Whole Story

The plan records that the December 2024 standard method lifted the borough's need from 351 to 615 homes a year, and the joint statement now gives 643. Because 434 is below 80% of that, the plan commits the council to a new plan under the new system. Put the council's 3,024 homes against 643 a year with only a 5% buffer, and five years would call for 3,376. The plan's yardstick stands until it is replaced or turns five in March 2031, so that sum does not apply today. National policy adds that while a council shows five years, buffer included, and passes the delivery test above 75%, a higher standard method figure is not in itself evidence of unmet need under policy S5 for five years from the plan's adoption. The sum does show how much more land the next plan will have to find.

Brun Lane: From 2,000 Homes to an Area for Future Growth

Derby cannot fit its own need inside its boundary. The statement of common ground puts the city's capacity at 12,500 homes against a need of 18,340 over 2023 to 2043, a shortfall of 5,840, and says the best places to meet it within Amber Valley and South Derbyshire are on the city's edge. South Derbyshire takes 4,867 of those homes and Amber Valley 1,320.

Amber Valley's share was meant to come from about 2,000 homes on fields off Brun Lane at Mackworth, west of the city, 1,320 of them by 2040. The inspectors accepted that the area is relatively unconstrained and well related to Derby, but the main landowner told them it no longer wished to develop that many homes and would release land for around 500. That, in their view, risked piecemeal building without the infrastructure a scheme of this size needs. The council said compulsory purchase could secure the land. The inspectors had no evidence that the circumstances for it existed, could not conclude the land would be available when the council expected, and took the reference to compulsory purchase out of the plan.

The allocation was removed and replaced by an Area for Future Growth. Policy SGS1 now gives the area potential for 2,000 homes beyond the plan period, to be planned through a masterplan prepared with neighbouring councils, South Derbyshire among them, with a secondary school, primary places, a neighbourhood centre and access from the A52 and the B5020 or Brun Lane. Building is to avoid ridge and furrow, high ground and land beside the Mackworth Conservation Area, and to respect views to and from Kedleston Hall. The plan says delivery is not expected until the latter part of the plan period and that the council does not rely on the area in its housing supply. Derby's 1,320 homes stay in the requirement all the same: the inspectors found that sites cannot in reality be ring-fenced for another district's needs, and kept the figure as a pragmatic first step.

Where the Plan's Homes Come From Instead

Without Brun Lane, the plan provides for at least 7,656 homes between 2024 and 2040 against its requirement of 6,944, about 10% more. Most are already in hand: 819 built in 2024/25, 4,083 on large sites with permission and 529 on small ones, 284 on neighbourhood plan sites and 1,020 expected from small windfall sites, leaving 921 on the plan's own allocations without permission. The allocations total 1,026 homes, and the main ones are:

Land north of Derby Road, Denby (Cinderhill): 300 homes and 30 hectares of business and industrial land on former mining and clay workings, released from the Green Belt in 2006, with the heavily contaminated tar pits beside it left out. When the inspectors reported, the council had resolved to approve an outline application subject to a legal agreement not yet signed, and they judged homes there around 2030 credible.
Thirteen smaller sites of 10 to 180 homes, the largest being Aldreds Lane in Heanor, with 180, and Alderwasley Mills at Ambergate, with 140.

The inspectors also struck out four employment sites, at Cotes Park Lane West and Wimsey Way in Somercotes, Slack Lane in Heanor and Denby Hall, leaving 77.93 hectares of land for business and industry against a requirement of 57.27.

For an owner near Mackworth, Kirk Langley or Kedleston, the lesson is that a site is judged on whether it can actually be delivered, not only on where it sits. Evidence that the land is available, with willing owners and a way in for the roads, is what the Brun Lane allocation lacked.

Green Belt Around Three Towns, and a Policy for the Edges

The Green Belt wraps Belper, Heanor and Ripley and reaches Alfreton's southern edge. The adopted plan makes one change to it, taking out a site off High Holborn Road at Codnor for two Gypsy and Traveller pitches; the inspectors deleted a proposal to take out the Denby Hall business park extension as well. Inside the Green Belt, policy SS8 grants permission only in line with national policy and the plan's other policies.

Policy H1: Homes Beside a Town or Village

The adopted plan draws no settlement boundaries. Its housing policies turn instead on the "built framework", which it defines as the limits of continuous or contiguous development forming the existing built-up area of a settlement. Inside that line, homes are permitted in the towns and key villages, and in more limited forms in the smaller villages. Beyond it, policy H1 also permits housing on land adjacent to the built framework of the four towns, the key villages and the borough's part of Derby, where all three of its tests are met:

Proportionate. Its scale and character suit the settlement and its place in the hierarchy, allowing for other schemes and the landscape setting.
Sustainable. It is within reach of services and facilities, or improves them.
Serviced. There is enough infrastructure, existing or planned, to support it.

Policy H2 applies the same tests to land beside the smaller villages. The inspectors found this approach justified, and the plan counts on it: its supply includes 85 homes a year from small windfall sites, which the inspectors accepted partly because H1 and H2 are generally supportive of new housing within and next to settlements. None of this overrides the Green Belt, where policy SS8 and national policy still decide.

So the five-year supply matters less here than in many districts. Policy S5 of the national framework needs evidence of unmet need, and with delivery at 173% and a supply above five years that evidence is absent today, but H1 does not ask for it. A field that sits properly against a town or key village, outside the Green Belt, can be put forward now on the plan's own terms.

Where the Green Belt Applies

Grey belt housing carries its own need test, usually met where supply falls below five years or the delivery test result drops under 75%, and neither is the case today. The routes that remain open in the Green Belt are narrower:

Inside the towns and villages. Gardens, plots and backland within Belper, Ripley, Alfreton, Heanor and the key villages come under national policy S4, so the council should say yes unless the harm from building there would substantially outweigh its benefits.
Old works and yards. Where lawful buildings or hard surfacing already stand, as on an old works, yard or depot, national Green Belt policy judges the site apart from open fields, and the supply figure plays no part. Farm buildings in agricultural use do not count.
Rural exception sites. Small affordable schemes that meet a proven local need, normally shown by a parish or village survey, which the plan expects on low value farmland.
The new plan. Open Green Belt fields will be decided through the 2026 to 2044 plan.

Our page on paddocks and small sites covers the smaller routes in more detail, and the grey belt guide explains the need test that grey belt housing has to meet.

Affordable Housing by Value Zone

Policy H5 sets affordable housing on schemes of ten or more homes by the value of each area: 40% in the rural parishes of the higher value zone, such as Crich, Kirk Langley, Quarndon and South Wingfield; 30% in the Belper area, which takes in Duffield, Denby, Holbrook and Kilburn; and 20% around Alfreton, Heanor and Ripley. Brownfield sites of 10 to 19 homes in the lower zone carry 10%. Close to Derby, the affordable homes may be shaped to the city's needs. A field outside Crich and one outside Heanor can therefore support very different schemes, and we allow for that from the first assessment.

A Borough the July Decision Would Split in Two

On 16 July 2026 the government chose to replace Derbyshire's ten councils with two unitary councils from April 2028, and to divide Amber Valley between them. The borough council said it was disappointed, as splitting the borough had drawn the least support in consultation.

From Amber Valley Borough Council's update of 16 July 2026.
Proposed council	Amber Valley parishes
Northern council (21 parishes)	Including Alfreton, Ripley, Heanor and Loscoe, Aldercar and Langley Mill, Codnor, Crich, Ironville, Somercotes, Swanwick, South Wingfield, Pentrich and Alderwasley
Southern council, with Derby, Erewash and South Derbyshire (14 parishes)	Belper, Denby, Duffield, Holbrook, Horsley, Horsley Woodhouse, Kedleston, Kilburn, Kirk Langley, Mackworth, Mapperley, Quarndon, Shipley and Smalley

On 7 September 2026 the government paused the Derbyshire decision for review, while saying that reorganisation had not ended. If the split does return, Belper, Duffield and Mackworth would share a council with Derby, the city whose unmet need the next plan is to seek to address. For now Amber Valley Borough Council decides every application in the borough, and the adopted plan applies throughout it.

The Land We Look for in Amber Valley

Fields adjoining the towns or key villages outside the Green Belt, which policy H1 can support now.
Plots, gardens and backland inside Belper, Ripley, Alfreton, Heanor or the key villages such as Duffield, Crich and Kilburn.
Former works, yards and depots in the Green Belt around Belper, Heanor and Ripley.
Larger holdings near Derby's western and northern edge, where the city's need is being planned for.
Land within walking distance of Belper, Duffield, Alfreton or Langley Mill station.
Farmland away from the settlements that could be put forward to the new plan.

For land headed for the new plan, the evidence the council will ask for, on access, drainage, ecology and landscape, is the work we pay for in full. Our option agreement fixes the price at the outset, higher than the land's present value, and you keep farming or letting it meanwhile. Should consent not come, you keep the land and pay us nothing. The agreement runs on for as long as an application or appeal is being decided.

From Scoping to a 2044 Plan, With the 2026 Plan in Force

What Adoption Settled

The council's adoption statement records that the adopted plan includes every main modification recommended in the inspectors' report, published on 13 February 2026, along with minor changes made by the council, and that it now carries full weight in deciding planning applications. The development plan for the borough is the new Local Plan, the Derby and Derbyshire minerals and waste local plans, and neighbourhood plans, but only those neighbourhood plan policies that are in general conformity with the new Local Plan. Where land sits in a parish with a neighbourhood plan, we read each of its policies against the 2026 plan. Anyone aggrieved by the plan had six weeks from the day after adoption to apply to the High Court on legal or procedural grounds, a window that closed in mid-April 2026.

The Next Plan's Timetable

The adopted plan requires the council to prepare and submit a new plan under the new plan-making system, and to use it to address any unmet housing need in the Derby housing market area. The council gave notice on 19 June 2026 that it was starting the Amber Valley Local Plan 2026 to 2044 and ran a scoping consultation in July and August. It has said it will keep to its published timetable despite reorganisation. The stages ahead:

Taken from the council's June 2026 timetable; these are its target dates, not fixed ones.
Stage	Council's timetable
Gateway 1 self-assessment	21 October 2026
Consultation on plan content and evidence	5 April to 24 May 2027
Gateway 2 advice	21 June 2027
Consultation on the proposed plan	22 March to 26 April 2028
Submission to the Secretary of State	6 September 2028
Adoption	7 March 2029

The spring 2027 consultation is the first stage at which the plan's proposed content and evidence go out for comment. Land with its evidence ready before then is in the strongest position. Each of those stages, and what the council wants from an owner at it, is explained in our guide to how land enters a local plan.

Putting Land Forward

The council ran a call for sites in spring 2026, with a forum for developers, landowners and agents on 30 March. Its land availability page says sites can be submitted at any time and will be assessed in the next yearly update, so a site suggestion form sent now still counts. The most recent assessment on the council's website dates from January 2024, so the next edition should show how the spring 2026 submissions were judged.

The Next Supply Statement and Delivery Test

The council has issued a statement for each April from 2022 to 2026. While the adopted plan is under five years old its 434 homes remain the yardstick, so the margin in the next statement will turn mainly on how many permissions are granted and built. Delivery is tested again every year, and the current Housing Delivery Test 2025 was published on 17 August 2026. At 173% none of the test's consequences applies; a result below 95% would bring an action plan, and below 85% a 20% buffer for a second reason.

What This Means for Timing

Fields beside a town or key village outside the Green Belt can be judged against policy H1 now.
Old yards, works and plots within the towns stand apart from the housing numbers and can be looked at now.
Open fields away from settlements, and Green Belt land, are best prepared for the April 2027 consultation.
Holdings near Derby sit where both the city's need and any future council boundary point, and are worth an early conversation.

The wider county picture, including Erewash and the Dales, is on our Derbyshire page.

Questions About Land in Amber Valley

I own land off Brun Lane at Mackworth. Is it allocated for housing?

Not as an allocation. The adopted plan identifies an Area for Future Growth there, with potential for 2,000 homes beyond 2040, to be planned through a masterplan with the neighbouring councils, and the council does not count it in its housing supply. Its future will be settled through the new plan to 2044, where, as the examination showed, evidence that the land is available counts for a great deal.

I missed the 2026 call for sites. Can I still put my land in?

Yes. The council accepts site suggestions at any time and assesses them in the next yearly update of its land availability assessment. Where we take a site on, we prepare the map and the supporting evidence.

The council has more than five years of supply. Is an application on a field at the edge of a town worth making?

It can be. Policy H1 of the adopted plan permits homes on land adjacent to a town or key village where the scale suits the place, services are within reach and infrastructure can cope, whatever the supply. The catch is the Green Belt, which surrounds much of Belper, Heanor and Ripley. There the grey belt need test is hard to meet today, and the new plan is the likelier route.

Duffield would move to the southern council under the July plan. Does that change anything now?

No. The decision is paused, the borough council still decides applications, and the adopted plan applies across the whole borough until a new plan replaces it.

Why would a site near Ripley carry less affordable housing than one near Crich?

Policy H5 sets affordable housing by area value: 20% around Ripley, Alfreton and Heanor, 30% in the Belper area including Duffield, and 40% in rural parishes such as Crich. It changes what a scheme can support, and we build it into our assessment before any price is agreed.

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Sources

Figures on this page come from the Housing Delivery Test 2025 (published 17 August 2026) and the Planning Inspectorate's local plan monitoring to August 2026, with newer plan milestones checked on 24 September 2026. We update the page when new results or plan milestones are published. Planning positions change quickly, so always check the council's own website before relying on it.